53 Years To The Day That Eisenhower Warned Of The Military-Industrial Complex, Obama Will Further Its Cause (via Techdirt)
Fifty three years ago today, President Dwight Eisenhower gave his famous speech warning of the military-industrial complex. It’s quite a speech, and well worth reading, listening to or watching. But, the famous lines are the ones that still rings true…
This is some unexpected good news:
WASHINGTON—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke publicly with the White House Wednesday on trade policy, instantly imperiling two major international trade deals and punching a hole in one piece of the economic agenda the president outlined in his State of the Union address a day earlier.
Mr. Reid told reporters he opposed legislation aimed at smoothing the passage of free-trade agreements, a vital component to negotiating any deal, and pointedly said supporters should back down.
“I’m against fast track,” Mr. Reid (D., Nev.) said, using the shorthand term for legislation that prevents overseas trade agreements from being amended during the congressional approval process. “I think everyone would be well-advised just not to push this right now.”
The move spells trouble for two sets of complicated talks, one with the European Union and the other with countries in the Asian-Pacific region. Both deals likely would have required such a “fast track” approval to clear the Congress. The U.S.’s negotiating partners wouldn’t likely commit to a final agreement that could be unpopular back home without assurances that it couldn’t be modified by U.S. lawmakers.
You may not remember how Todd Christie was under investigation by the feds, and got off under unusual circumstances:
When Christopher Christie went on to Seton Hall Law School, Todd Christie followed their father’s path to the financial world, where his high energy and salesman’s bravado allowed him to flourish quickly at the Wall Street trade specialist firm Spear, Leeds & Kellogg. He rose to become chief executive, and when Goldman Sachs bought the company in 2000 for more than $6 billion, Todd Christie’s piece of the deal amounted to about $60 million.
By 2003, however, Spear, Leeds was under investigation on suspicion of cheating customers to benefit the firm. Todd Christie resigned in March 2003, although he says that his departure was not related to the inquiry and that he did not find out until months later that he was among the traders being investigated. When the United States attorney in Manhattan, David N. Kelley, secured criminal indictments against 15 traders at the firmin 2005, Todd Christie was spared, and faced only civil fraud charges along with four other traders.
The company ultimately settled the case, repaying more than $16 million to investors, without admitting or denying wrongdoing. During the campaign, Christopher Christie stated that his brother had done “absolutely nothing wrong,” and in an interview this week Todd Christie said he had been “completely exonerated.” Two of the indicted traders pleaded guilty; the 13 others were ultimately cleared of criminal charges.
The Securities and Exchange Administration settlement Todd Christie signed, dated Oct. 15, 2008, maintains that he carried out hundreds of trades that brought the firm thousands of dollars in profits at its customers’ expense, and had violated stock exchange rules.
While the investigation produced uncomfortable headlines, particularly when Christopher Christie was deliberating whether to run for governor in 2005, the windfall his brother earned on Wall Street certainly helped ingratiate him with party leaders.
Todd Christie began giving tens of thousands of dollars to New Jersey’s Republican county chairmen in 2001, at a time when they were deciding whom to recommend that the Bush administration nominate as the state’s United States attorney. Three months after his brother was sworn in at that job, Todd Christie wrote a $225,000 check to the Republican National Committee.
Democrats have characterized those contributions as a blunt attempt to help his brother become United States attorney, but Todd Christie insists there was no connection between the two.
“I’d always been involved in politics, but since I’d had the good fortune to become successful, I had more to give,” he said.
[…] In the general election, Democrats also tried to make an issue of Todd’s legal troubles with federal regulators and Chrisopher Christie’s decision in 2007 to give a no-bid legal contract, to monitor an orthopedics firm, to David N. Kelley, the former federal prosecutor who had handled the case against Todd Christie’s firm.
Christopher Christie says that the contract was awarded on merit, and that he and Mr. Kelley have never discussed his brother’s case. Mr. Kelley has concurred, saying his decisions in the Spear, Leeds investigation were influenced solely by the evidence.
There’s a lengthy and quietly damning look at the Christie organization in this morning’s Times.
And it validates what I said all along: Getting the endorsements was always more important than the real estate deal. The important plan was to package and sell Christie as the bipartisan savior, and the financial shenanigans were just business as usual.
Mr. Christie has said that he had not been aware of his office’s involvement in the maneuver, and nothing has directly tied to him to it. But a close look at his operation and how intimately he was involved in it, described in interviews with dozens of people — Republican and Democrat, including current and former Christie administration officials, elected leaders and legislative aides — gives credence to the puzzlement expressed by some Republicans and many Democrats in the state, who question how a detail-obsessed governor could have been unaware of the closings or the effort over months to cover up the political motive.
Christie is going to have a very hard time now, because the Times piece emphasizes that Christie was closely involved in decision making. Here are the parts that jumped out at me:
Mr. Christie himself tended to the smallest of details. He personally oversaw appointments to the State Board of Physical Therapy Examiners, legislative leaders said, and when he wanted to discuss something with lawmakers, he texted them himself. (He told one top legislator that he had learned from his experience as United States attorney not to email; texts were harder to trace.)
And this:
The State House team met briefly every morning, perhaps for 20 minutes, for a quick overview of the day’s issues and what was being reported, with the governor joining in person or on the phone. Since his days as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, many people said, he preferred to use his cellphone or to meet, rather than to communicate by email or conference call.
Christie’s in trouble. Big trouble.
Oh dear:
Christie’s brother profited from sale of Harrison homes near Port Authority project, report says (via NJ.com)
HARRISON — Gov. Chris Christie’s brother was part of a group that bought properties near the Harrison PATH station before a $256 million renovation of the facility was publicly approved, according to a report on NorthJersey.com. Todd Christie and…
Jesus. Let him go live in Gaza for a week:
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio gave a heartfelt speech praising Israel at a private gala event hosted by AIPAC at the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan Thursday night, the local website Capital New York reported.
According to an edited audio recording obtained by the site (below), de Blasio said that “part of his job description is to defend Israel” and that it is “elemental to being an American, because there is no greater ally on earth, and that’s something we can say proudly.”
The Israel lobby’s event was closed to journalists and the speech did not appear on the mayor’s public schedule, arousing suspicion and making the event all the more intriguing. A reporter with Capital who tried to get into the event was escorted out by security.
De Blasio said in his speech that he had visited Israel three times, most recently with his wife and son, and that he was especially moved by visiting Sderot, on the border with the Gaza Strip and often the target of rocket attacks.
“You can’t have an experience like that and not feel solidarity with the people of Israel and know that they’re on the front line of fighting against so many challenges.”
I pulled out this portion of an Al Jazeera America interview with Jill Abramson, executive editor of the New York Times. I thought it was interesting, particularly the journalmalism that still has her making excuses and refusing to acknowledge that the Bush administration deliberately mislead the country in its march to war:
Let me move on to another topic in the Obama administration. How would you grade this administration, compared to others, when it comes to its relationship with the media?
Well, I would slightly like to interpret the question as “How secretive is this White House?” which I think is the most important question. I would say it is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.
I dealt directly with the Bush White House when they had concerns that stories we were about to run put the national security under threat. But, you know, they were not pursuing criminal leak investigations. The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It’s on a scale never seen before. This is the most secretive White House that, at least as a journalist, I have ever dealt with.
And do you think this comes directly from the president?
I would think that it would have to. I don’t know that, but certainly enough attention has been focused on this issue that, if he departed from the policies of his government, I think we’d know that at this point.
Continue reading “‘Most secretive administration ever’”
Steve Kornacki on the difference between politics as usual and outright criminality:
